You Can't Depoliticize Science

In State of Fear several generic characters are used as representations of real life people and groups:

Kerner = Michael Crichton

Evans = Reader

Drake = Professional environmentalist

By examining how these characters are presented we can make several inferences concerning Crichton's views on several of the topics we are going through in class like black boxes, research bias, and persuadability based on authority.

Kerner is presented as our rational lawyer who is very intelligent (how self flattering Crichton) what is truly disturbing is how far ahead this allegorical character for the author is presented intellectually compared to scientists who are in the field doing research and being critiqued by peers daily. I'm not claiming science is perfect but claiming you know more than the folks who spent a lifetime in the field seems tantamount to hubris to me.

Evans is portrayed as cynical but still liable to being misled by faulty facts, quite frankly who isn't. We are only as good as our seeing devices and models so it is inferred that since our models and seeing devices are constructed by humans (who are fallible) that occasionaly such devices models will also be fallible, NOTHING IS A 100% CERTAINTY, EVER.

Finally we have Drake, the smooth academic impersonating lawyer who has all the angles figured out heading this fund for hefty salary of 300,000$ a year plus expenses. In effect I think Crichton uses Drake to show the way self interest and politics can corrupt science for personal gain. When faced with contradictory evidence that Global Warming doesn't exist Drake would naturally disagree, his livelihood is on the line.

The point I feel Crichton misses however is that like or not science and politics will always be one in the same because of the foundational ties that government has to both our education system and the way that safeguards and regulations are levied on scientific research. Most people will agree that our society has a duty to improve the state of society through education of the youth and won't disagree to public funding of school systems. Piles of research have shown that investments in education always pay huge dividends in the longrun and due to this our politicians have to decide where dollars are spent and often have an agenda behind allocations of funds wether it entails the garnering of votes in a future election or because they are reinforcing party policies to appear consistent in their views, non-consistent politicans don't last long. Personally, I don't believe science and politics can ever be separated by virtue of the fact that we live in a liberal society.